Night Blind
by The 13th Monkey
Summary: Sometimes when you think there's something under your bed, there is. Something with teeth like razors and eyes of cold, green fire. Something patient, something hungry. Stephen Graves is about to find out all about that.


night blind

**Something in this room with me. The house I grew up in as a child. The red beanbag and the television set. Deadsong. The light-worms. The man in the leather/not-leather coat. The guy before me. **

There is something in this room with me. I don't know where it is, or indeed, what it is but it is here with me in the dark and I don't know what scares me more- finding out what it is or being left in the dark (so to speak, ha) forever. It's a small and drab room by anyone's standards and believe me, I've been in a few roadside hotel rooms in my time, more than enough to know the musty, stale-air smell of them and the feel of the half-clean sheets by heart. The room is about eighteen feet square with a flimsy looking door directly opposite the foot of the bed- which is positioned directly in the middle of the room, up against the wall and underneath the room's only window, and there is another door to the left of the bed. The door at the foot of the bed leads out onto the narrow walkway that travels past all the rooms on this floor-the ground floor if you must know- and the one to my left leads to the small, cramped but functional bathroom. Just outside my room are the obligatory ice machine and snack-dispensing unit that all hotels of this nature seem to possess. Every fifteen minutes or so I hear the Clang-chunk sound of another bunch of freshly made ice falling into the trough at the bottom of the machine or, almost as often, the sound of someone hitting and swearing at the snack dispenser as it eats their change and then refuses to give them that bag of Doritos they're craving at two in the morning. The room is decorated like the thousands of other rooms just like it all around the country. There is a sad and depressing reprint of some silly, blue-skinned woman in a yellow dress on the wall to my right. Directly underneath that is a scuffed and beaten chest of drawers that was in it's prime probably around the same time that man first walked on the moon. There is an empty blue-glass vase on top of the chest, covered in dust and unused, I would assume, for about a decade. Next to the chest is a tiny bar fridge that's sitting in a pool of water which has turned the already foul shade of brown carpet into something resembling a tub full of used diapers. There are no curtains on the window, rather a set of blinds that has probably never in its life seen the soft side of a cleaning rag. Those blinds are half the reason I took this room. The other reason is that there is a bathtub in the bathroom, rather than just a shower. I have many uses for bathtubs. The bathroom, as I have already said, is small but functional. As you enter the room there is a sink directly to your right with a mirrored medicine cabinet directly above it. Inside the cabinet are a tiny tube of generic toothpaste, a tiny bottle of Aspirin, a toothbrush and a box of condoms. All of these items are sealed in plastic and have price tags attached. You pay for what you use in a place like this. This kind of hotel in made for functionality, not luxury. In the middle of the room is a toilet, with one of those paper rings on it that are supposed to prove that no one has used the bog since it was last cleaned, and next to this is the bath. It's not a big bath but it's certainly big enough. The bath has a railing above it from which hangs, quite possibly, _the_ most obscenely ugly shower curtain in the entire world. I can't even begin to describe how truly hideous this thing is. At first glance it looks like it's covered in large purple/orange flowers, but when you look again, they look like malformed pumpkins. In between the rows of pumpkins/flowers are what could either be wood nymphs frolicking about or, bizarrely, dolphins. The usual assortment of miniature shampoos, conditioners and soaps are displayed in a steel basket on the side of the tub-these are free, apparently the management here doesn't like people brushing their teeth, drinking or fucking but washing up is OK. Next to the bath, which is filled with something I'll tell you about later, is a towel rack with three only slightly yellow towels hanging from it. I remember the bathroom well, lit up as it is by six fluorescent tubes, as I had used it not twenty minutes ago. I'm lying prone and naked on the bed at the moment but I used the bathroom a short while ago to get a drink of water and take a leak when the dream woke me. It shouldn't have woken me; I've slept through far more disturbing dreams than this one (it comes with my line of work), but wake me it most surely did. I am in the house I grew up in as a child. Except for the fact that the house is completely empty, both of people and furniture, it is exactly as I remember it. There is a large living room with a glass door on one end that leads out to the garden and the pool. Opposite this door are three steps that lead up to the kitchen- always my favorite room, my mom taught me how to bake in that room one month many years ago and I can never walk past a bakery in the morning, smelling the new bread fresh out of the oven, husky and earthy and good- without thinking of her. A corridor to the left of the kitchen leads to the bedrooms and the bathrooms and my fathers 'study' (my least favorite room. I never actually saw him doing any studying in that room, mostly he just drank). When the dream started I am all alone in the house, no, more than that, I am a ghost, a disembodied entity, floating up near the ceiling and looking around. Then, I see myself as a child, sitting on a giant red beanbag about a foot away from the television set in the corner of the living room. There are no programmes on the TV, just a blizzard of electric snow. For a minute it looks like there might be images on the screen, _things _in the snow, but then I blink and they're gone. Blown away by the great electric snowstorm of '03. I'm sitting there staring blankly into the screen as if the most interesting television show in the world is being broadcast. For some reason my perspective keeps switching in my dream. One minute, I'm hanging out on the ceiling, watching myself watching the TV. There I am, sitting on the beanbag, my legs pulled up to my chest, my hands clenched into fists under my chin, my eyes unblinking, staring not at the TV but _in _the TV. Then, in much less than the blink of an eye, I'm inside my childhood body, inches away from the screen and all I can see are the little black and while pixels swirling and dancing in front of me. After a while I notice that I do have some limited control over the body I'm inhabiting. I can move my head around slightly but only in the direction of the glass sliding door. Whenever I try to look in the other direction, towards the kitchen, my perspective instantly switches back to up by the ceiling. Whenever this happens I notice that my little-boy self immediately starts looking towards the sliding door and to the garden beyond. I try to yell to myself _'Don't look out there, it's not right out there, something is wrong!' _but nothing ever comes out. All around me I can hear the hiss of the static. HhhHHSsssss. On and on it drones, getting louder all the time, filling up my ears until I become convinced that this sound will be the white-noise sound I will hear after I die and move towards the light (a deep shade of red in my case, I think). In the dream I start calling it Deadsong, it seems fitting. The serpentine hiss of the television static is loudest when my perspective switches to in front of the TV. Even though it is almost painfully loud at these times, I hear a voice coming from outside, talking to me. The voice is very strange, almost eldritch. Did you ever sit in a still room at the height of summer? When the air itself seemed warm and it just hung there, unmoving and stagnant. Did you ever switch on a rotary fan in the corner to get some sort of breeze going? Try this, turn a fan on full blast and then go really close to it and speak in a relatively loud voice. The chopping of the blades should make your voice sound strangely mechanical and all sliced up. Like a reel of motion picture film that has had four out of every twenty-four frames removed. That's what the voice in my dream sounded like only much deeper and with a strange lisp on the S sounds.

"_C ome outssside, c ome outSSSIDE, Ple assssse" _the voice implored me and under this, the hiss of the static, the hiss of the deadsong.

I am once again up by the ceiling watching the goings-on. I see myself get up and walk towards the sliding door. Suddenly, the room is empty once again. No TV, no beanbag, just me, walking towards the door. Things are getting a little weird for my liking. Although the TV is gone, the strobe-light like flashing usually associated with TV static still filled the room but now it wasn't coming from any source. It is just there, alternating between plunging the room into complete darkness and filling it with light and strange shadows. Now I'm in me again and I can see my hand reaching for the handle to slide the door open. I try to stop myself but I'm just a passenger along for the ride here. I have no control and the door slides soundlessly open. I step out into the garden and the darkness. The grass feels cold and moist beneath my feet. It's quite long and individual blades of grass pop up between my toes. I can feel them slipping out as I take a step forward only to be replaced by another when I set my foot down again. It's a clear night with a half-moon. I can see the garden well, even if I have to strain my eyes to make out any detail. Directly in front of me is the swimming pool, one of those kidney-shaped pools that are too small to swim properly in and heat up too much during the summer. The underwater pool light is on but it seems strange. When the light is on the water usually turns an unsettling shade of electric blue and refraction throws those weird rippling lights on the walls of the house. Tonight the colour is there, that strange blue that I've always found a little menacing, but it seems to have no intensity. There are none of those little light-worms on the walls of the house. It feels dead. I make my way tentatively to the waters edge and look down. I'm not surprised to find that I cast no reflection. I am surprised to find that I am glad I cast no reflection. Having my face shown back to me in that dead water is more than I think I could take. I kneel down in front of the pool and can quite clearly hear the twin rifle shots of knees popping as they bend. It sounds too loud in the darkness of the garden and I whip my head around, looking for anyone who might have heard the sound. There is no one there. I see my hands reaching out and dipping below the water's surface. In one way it feels exactly like you would expect it too on a night like this. It's cool but not cold. But in another way it feels, well, wrong. It's too thick and too warm_. "Like a handful of blood"_ I try to say but no sound comes from my mouth. I then cup my hands together and in one swift movement I bring my hands up to my face, dousing it in the blood-like water. I'm reminded of a time when I did something similar, many years ago but this is both better and worse than that occasion. It's better because for a second the water feels great-cool and refreshing- it feels worse because at once the water running down my face feels _horrible. _I feel it running down my face and neck in little rivulets but the water's movement is too slow. It feels like thin, long worms sliding over my face, down my neck and into my shirt. Ignoring the sickening feeling of the water running down my chest I stand and look around the garden. It's almost completely flat and devoid of vegetation, just as I remember it, except for the South side. On the South side of the garden, just to my right, there is a steep bank leading up to the fence. It's about thirty feet long and at an angle of about 45 degrees. It runs the entire length of that side of the garden. About halfway up the bank and probably ten feet from the center, stands a man. He's very big, about six and a half feet tall, and he's dressed entirely in black. Black boots, black jeans and a long black coat. He's got his back to me and instead of feeling afraid, as I know I should be, I start thinking about that coat. It's not leather, but it looks like it. It looks like a strange cross between Leather and Lycra. A blend of some sort. And then I thought hits me, _"That is leather, but it didn't come from cows. That leather comes from…from…."_ But before I can finish this thought another one hits me. _"and it's not black, it's a very, very dark shade of brown, and you know why". _Just then the man turns his face towards me and my world collapses. His face is handsome, almost beautiful, framed in the moonlight by a head of pure black hair. His skin is smooth and unmarked in a way that is very unsettling-but I can't tell you why-and he is smiling. It's the smile that does it, the smile and the eyes. He's not actually smiling as such; he's grinning like a lunatic. This massive Joker-esque grimace that goes from ear to ear, literally, and is filled with needles. At least that's what I thought at first until I realise that his teeth have been filed down to razor sharp points. Every last one of them, and they are unnaturally long. Not only are the teeth filed down to points but also they are jagged, like a shark's, and I can just imagine row upon row of them, filling up his mouth. If one breaks off, no matter, another one will take its place, ready to pierce, to slice, and to _chew. _I catch myself thinking, _"how does he eat? Those teeth would cut his face to shreds if he tried to chew", _then it dawns on me that this man (if that's what he is) doesn't need to chew to eat. My knees are no longer working and I think I may have wet myself at this point. Then I see his eyes, or, to be more specific, his complete and utter lack of anything that could be described as eyes. His eye sockets are filled with flames, green flames that swirl and dance about. I see now that his fringe has been singed by these flames in many places and I think to myself, "_That happens when he gets excited, they burn more when he's excited". _Those eyes, although made up entirely of green flame, can see me perfectly. Oh yes, they can see me just fine. _"Hell o Ssssteven, I've been loo king f orward to thisssss" _he says to me and I notice that his teeth do indeed cut his mouth when he tries to speak. Blood is running from several puncture wounds on both his upper and lower lips. I'm frozen in place as he brings his whole body around to face me and then, with no warning whatsoever, he charges down the embankment towards me. On the way his mouth widens more than it is possible for any human mouth to get. The moonlight glinting off his savage teeth. I can see blood on his gums and red, jelly-like things between his teeth. _"That's the guy before me,"_ I think. He's practically flying down the bank now and is almost on top of me. **_"Sssssoooo HUNGRY" _**he screams. And then my world is filled with teeth and blood and the angry green fire of his eyes. And all I can hear is the hiss of the deadsong.

**2**

**Waking from the dream. The distant barking of dogs. The towel under the door. The dead woman in the tub. Elcondor Pasa. Low women in ugly shoes. Sharleen.**

I wake then but not with the start that you may expect. I've had dreams like that before, not that particular one, but similar. I open my eyes and instantaneously I remember where I am and what I am doing here and I am no longer afraid. It's like someone flicked a switch, CLICK, one second abject terror and panic and the next, realisation and calmness. I gingerly reach down under the blanket looking for the wet spot, sure I've pissed myself, or worse. The bed is dry; I must have only lost control of my bladder in the dream. Well, that's a relief. I'm not even sweating. Usually, for me anyway, a dream like that causes me to wake up shaking and sweating like a bastard. This time, however, I'm as dry as bone and completely relaxed, if a little thirsty and in desperate need of the toilet. I swing my legs over the bed and slide my feet into my slippers. I'm completely naked except for the slippers. They look like two bunny rabbits with huge floppy ears that bob about as I walk. I suppose I would look ridiculous to anyone else bit there's no one here, so fuck it. The room feels colder than I remember it being when I went to sleep, and this worries me, but only until I remember putting the air-conditioner on before I lay down. Only it isn't on now. Air-conditioners in this type of hotel room always make the worst noise, rattle-rattle Ka-chunk Ka-chunk, and you have to decide whether you'll sleep better with it off and the room hot but quiet, or if you'll sleep better with the room cool but noisy. I always turn them on. Not only do I hate waking up hot but also the steady hum they make drowns out the traffic noises outside. Not to mention the distant barking of dogs. I can't stand the sound of barking dogs. I once went around to some guys house in the middle of the night, in the middle of a rainstorm, clutching a steel baseball bat and threatened to kill him, his wife and their children (while the dog watched) if he didn't SHUT THE FUCKING THING UP. The aircon is off now but I don't think much of it, "must have a timer" I say to the darkened room and all-of–a-sudden I'm shivering. The sound of my voice, strained and wheezy, scaring me more than the dream did. "How odd" I say to myself, why should the sound of my own voice frighten me? I've gotten fairly used to it over the years and besides, I talk to myself on a regular basis when I'm alone in some room or other, who else is there to talk to? Certainly not the women I bring back to my room. They run out of things to say pretty damn quick once I get them alone. The room is very dark. All the lights are off and all the blinds are drawn. It wouldn't do to have some maid or some nosy neighbour looking in while I was working, I've even put a towel under the door to block the beam of light that comes in through the crack between the door and the floor. It's with some difficulty that I make my way to the bathroom from the bed even though it's only about eight feet. The floor is a little messy and I keep stumbling over things. Thank God for bunny slippers I always say. I flick the light switch and BOOM, the room is filled with white light from the six, I'm not shitting you, _six, _long light tubes in the ceiling. The first thing that strikes me is the smell. The coppery smell of blood and under and around all over that, the smell of something else. The smell of something just beginning to turn, to rot. The second thing I notice is the blood. It's everywhere. On the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls. Blood coats the yellowish bath-towels, blood drips from the bath and, perhaps most strikingly, there is a single drop on the toilet seat. Or, should I say, on the paper ring on top of the toilet seat. One perfect drop spoiling the nice clean effect a paper ring like that brings to a room. There is quite a lot of it, but, there would be, wouldn't there? A human body contains (according to size and body weight) approximately nine liters of blood and I'd drained every last drop that I possibly could from the woman in the bathtub, behind the curtain. One of her skinless hands pokes out between the gap in the curtain and that makes me smile. It looks like some woman relaxing in the tub after a hard day's work around the house, getting clean and fresh in time for her husband's arrival. I can imagine her relaxing in a bath full of soapy water and bubbles, running her hands down over her chest, caressing her breasts, tweaking her nipples, before sliding further down to run her fingers through her greased pubic hair. Slipping one finger into the crease at the core of her before going on to wash, rinse and repeat her hair. Except it isn't warn water she's reclining in. It's cold, congealing blood. Hers. All of it. I'd met her in a seedy bar just across the street. In towns like this, towns on the fringes of society, that's the best kind of place to pick up lonely, sad women. She was both and then some. I'd gone to the pub down the road, the River Garden's Hotel, quite late, as that's the best time to pick up the kind of woman I'm interested in. Low women in ugly shoes and second-hand, (probably stolen), dresses who will fuck you blind for a couple of Gins and suck your dick for a week if you buy then a meal on top of the booze, (it's not necessary but it is a nice touch). They prop up the bar from opening time until closing time, when they are kicked out, or until some slack-jawed drunk with beer and cheese-sandwich breath buys them enough drinks. Then they go home with these men and have ugly, drunken and regretful sex with them and wake up in the morning with a hangover, a foul taste in their mouths and not knowing where they are or how their lives turned out so shit. They are so easy, and so much fun. The woman in my bathtub's name was Sharleen and she wasn't so bad. When I met her she had just started her slow, agonising and inevitable slide into the slum known as Drunken Slutsville. She was, as I would later find out, twenty-nine years old. When I first clapped eyes on here I took her for about forty. She was of medium height, medium build and large appetite. Her breasts were still firm but her ass had already taken on the look of one that had spent too much time sitting on narrow barstools. Her face was pretty; I must admit that, although the bags under her eyes and the scar running from the right corner of her mouth to the right corner of her right eye kind of ruined the effect. She had brown hair that hadn't seen a tube of conditioner in about a year and her perfume, although cloying and cheap smelling, was vile. I liked her the instant I set eyes on her. A couple more years living like this and you would be able to smell her booze breath from across the room and spot her sallow, jaundiced skin even in the low light typical of this kind of bar. I spotted her almost immediately when I entered the bar. She held her drink like it was her favorite child and nervously scanned the near-empty room for anyone who would buy her a drink and, hopefully, help tip her over the edge of drunkenness she was so precariously balancing upon. As I entered the bar that old Simon and Garfunkle son 'Elcondor Pasa' was playing on the beat-up juke in the corner. I sidled up to the bar and perched myself on an unstable stool. Even though I had noticed the woman the moment my eyes adjusted to the gloomy and smoke-filled air of the bar, I sat quite a ways away from her. I didn't want it to look like I was there purely to pick up loose women but I wanted to be close enough to speak to her in a normal tone of voice, should I choose to at some point. The bartender, a heavy set man with no hair and many chins, with whom I wouldn't fuck with in a million years, came over and asked me what I wanted in a voice laced with too-many Camels. I ordered a large Stella-Artois and a neat Jack Daniel's and asked for a menu. I could feel the woman's eyes on me from the minute I ordered the drinks. The men who usually come to places like this don't have enough money for imported beer, let alone J.D's, and usually settle for whatever watered down muck passes for local beer. I downed the Jacks in one gulp; a large sip of the icy beer following close on it's heels. The next time the barkeep came over I ordered another beer and the steak dinner, bloody-as-fuck, obviously. By now Mr. Robert Zimmerman singing about 'Mozambique' had replaced Simon and Garfunkle. I was starting to like this place. A further two beers later and after I had finished my steak I made a big show of turning around and noticing my surroundings for the first time. Two beer-bellied neophytes were playing pool in one corner of the place on a queer table, by queer I mean far-from-straight, by the way. The table was scuffed and faded and, judging by the stains, many beers (and other things) had been spilled on it. The clack-clack sound of balls kissing off other balls was barely audible over the strangled-cat vocals of Barbara Streisand, who had replaced Uncle Bob on the second hand Wurlitzer. Every now-and-then one of them would either whoop with joy or curse in anger. The same game had been going on since I walked in, they weren't very good. In the booth next to them a man was sleeping, well, passed out would be a better description but I'm feeling generous, on the table. His right hand still clutching the beer that had sent him off to the land of Nod, and he had soiled himself. I could see a thin strand of drool running from the corner of his mouth, pooling on the table, and, disgustingly, running off the table. The strand hadn't quite reached the floor yet but given time I'm sure it would. In a bar like this, all anyone has is time. The barkeep was counting the night's takings at the opposite end of the bar, obviously not trusting strangers, even ones who appeared to have money. The air itself was hazy with cigarette smoke, quite a few of which had ended up on the floor, crumpled and forgotten. Just like the woman. There was a raggedy dog snoring in the corner, every now and then the smell of sewers would reach my nose and I would know that the dog had let one off. I was glad no one was smoking near the dog. Methane fires are the worst. I noticed the woman looking at me. "Hello, my name is Steven" I told her, with cheer in my voice "May I buy you a drink?" Her eyes lit up like she had just won the lottery, the sweepstakes and the church Bingo session.

"Sure" she replied, with more than a little drunkenness in her voice, "as long as you're not some kind of weirdo". She finished with what sounded like genuine concern in her voice.

"I assure you that I am not" I replied.

This seemed to allay all her fears of me being a serial rapist or killer on the prowl. Her need for drink, in any form, clearly outweighing her sense of self-preservation. She waddled over to me on unsteady legs that betrayed her years and thumped herself down on the stool next to me. It was as if the ten feet between us was more than her fragile body could take, and believe me, before the night was over, her body would take a lot.

"Sharleen" she slurringly introduced herself as, holding one hand out to me to shake.

I took her hand, shook it and replied "Steven Graves, pleased to meet you. Now, what'll it be".

**3**

**The Barkeep calls time. A sack full of dead kittens. The sound of her screams. The Lights behind my eyes. The Pool of Dead Things and the Hanging Garden. And then the voice came. **

After that it was easy. I plied her with drink, both more expensive and stronger than she was used to, and by the time the barkeep called time, she was mine.

As the barkeeper switched off the lights and made ready to go home I suggested to Sharleen that she come home with me for a little fun, she refused. I could tell that she was disappointed that the steady stream of free liquor had run out so I suggested she come back to my place for a couple of nightcaps, she agreed immediately. Lights long since extinguished coming back to life in her eyes. I practically had to carry her out of the joint she was so drunk but the look on the bartender's face and the slow, disapproving shake of his head I saw as I turned to wave goodnight told me that this was nothing new. I tipped her into the passenger seat of my car-turning my head away as she belched in my face, giving me an olfactory map of all she had eaten or drunk in the last 48 hours- and then drove her to my hotel. We didn't speak much on the way home. She was clearly preoccupied with the thought of more free drink and I was preoccupied with…something else. Standing here now as a slow but steady stream of urine lands in the toilet water with its customary splashing and gurgling sounds I'm not really sure what I did to Sharleen once we were alone in the dark together. I didn't fuck her, that's for sure. I never do. I can remember opening the door for her and letting her stumble into the room in front of me. She sat heavily on the edge of the bed and I closed and locked the door and switched on the lights. The first words out of her mouth once she was settled on the bed were "where's the drink?"

I like a person with priorities. She wasn't here to talk, she wasn't here to fuck, she was here because I had promised her booze and she wanted it now. I fished a half-finished bottle of vodka out of the bar fridge in the corner-the pool of water under it now taking up that entire corner of the room, squelching under my shod feet-and handed it to her. "I don't have any glasses I'm afraid" I started to say but stopped halfway through, it wasn't necessary. She had already put the bottle to her lips, tilted her head back and was gulping down the clear firewater. "Now here's a woman with class" I thought, right before I clubbed her over the head with a sawn-off and loaded baseball bat. After that everything gets a bit _fuzzy. _It always does. I can see her falling in a heap on the ground like a sack full of dead kittens and I can see myself tying her hands to the curtain rail above the bath, putting her feet in the tub and stripping off her clothes, both outer and inner and gagging her mouth. I can even remember getting my little black bag out from under the bed and stripping off my own clothes, all of them. I even have a clear mental picture of emptying the contents of the black bag onto the bathroom floor, listening to the metallic sounds the knives made as they bounced off the tiles but I can't seem to put the sequence of events that followed into any sort of coherent order, probably because so much of the next hour or so simply isn't anywhere to be found in my memory, like I missed out on a whole hour somehow. I can remember the sound of her screams and the sound her blood made as it splashed into the bathtub but not why she was screaming, not what I did to her. Not all of it anyway. I remember the first cut clearly, I always do, from the base of her neck-where her Adam's Apple would have been, had she been a man- to the first tuft of pubic hair on her sex. It wasn't a deep cut, just deep enough to separate skin from flesh and definitely not deep enough to kill her. I like to take my time with them, hours sometimes, once, days. That's it, that's all I call recall with any sort of clarity. Judging from the fact that the hand protruding over the rim of the bathtub is pure red and I can see the bones in her fingers in some places, I must have done something with her skin, but I have no idea what. No-matter, I'm sure it'll turn up in the morning. I give my prick a few shakes, flush the toilet and head over to the bloodstained sink to wash my hands and get a drink of water. I take a look at my not unattractive face in the mirror. For a moment I study my face, tying to see if there are any visual clues on my face that could give away what a terrible monster lurks in side of me, there are none. Then I blink and when I open my eyes again my face has completely changed. The face reflected back at me is the face from my dreams. My eyes are pools of green fire but I can see fine, better than I could with my own eyes in fact, well enough at any rate to see my long, pointy and jagged teeth. I jump back from the sink with a muffled "Ooof", like someone has punched me in my stomach, and collide with the wall behind me. Hitting my head and getting some of Sharleen's blood on my back. For a brief moment my eyes close and all I can see are blue, yellow and red lights flashing behind my eyelids. When I open my eyes again I stare at the mirror, my face has returned to normal. I study my face in minute detail in the mirror for the next five minutes looking for puncture wounds on my upper or lower lips from those evil teeth I saw in my mouth a minute ago but find nothing. . I cup my hands under the running tap and splash cold water on my face and this time, unlike in my dream, the water feels good. Refreshing and calming at the same time. As the water runs down my face, neck and chest I remember a summer, years ago. I was twelve years old, as far as I can remember and I was off school for a week. One of my teachers, sneaking out for a smoke, had caught me behind the school sports equipment shed with a box of matches, a pair of garden shears and a kitten. The school decided that I needed a week off school while they 'assessed' my 'ability to fit in to a formal scholastic environment'. All I knew, all I cared about, was that I was off school for a whole week at the height of the hottest summer in living memory and there were a million things I wanted to do. My parent's house bordered on a large tract of undeveloped natural forest and this is where I spent most of my free time. There was a small stream running through the woods. It wasn't big but it flowed pretty much all-year round. The water was clean and fresh and I would often spend entire afternoons lazing around in it, splashing about and generally having the time of my life. Now that I had an extra week away from school I decided to explore the stream further into the woods than I'd ever been before. Each day I would get up early and follow the stream into the woods both exploring the woods and looking for anything I might 'experiment' with, an abandoned bicycle, the dilapidated husk of a wooden canoe, a stray dog, anything really. One day I wondered further than I ever had before and came across a shallow pool that I had never seen before. The pool was about twenty feet in diameter and the water was still and dark. The water gave off this unusual smell, like old leaves and compost and meat that almost screamed "dead things are in here" but I didn't care. I stripped of my clothes and jumped feet first into the stagnant water. I almost felt like I _had _to, like I would get into trouble if I didn't. From whom I did not know but it was a really strong feeling so I obeyed it. The pool was shallower than I expected it to and my feet hit the bottom before my head was even under water and the feel of the soil at the bottom of the pool almost made me scream. I was expecting mud and reeds and fallen leaves but this was different. There was mud but it was unlike any I had ever felt before. It was strangely thick and elastic like chewed gum and I could feel solid lumps embedded in the mud here and there. They weren't rocks, they weren't that solid, but they were there and the feel of them repulsed me. Silt and leaves began to drift up to the surface turning the black water to murky brown. Then, with a slowness that seemed unnatural, other things began to surface with wet, obscene popping sounds. A drowned dog, a dead and bloated cat, dozens of dead rats. All of their eyes open and glassy, those that still had eyes, of course. The smell that surfaced with the dead animals was the most pungently revolting smell I had ever come across. It was almost like a living thing, forcing its way into my mouth and nose, filling up my lungs with its putrescence and making me want to vomit. But I didn't; instead, I sat there in that pool of dead things for about an hour, breathing in the stink and rot of the bodies floating around me. After a while I began to feel thirsty and I did something I can't explain, even to this day. I cupped my hands in the filthy, loathsome water and then I lifted them to my mouth and drank deep. I didn't want to but something _compelled _me. I could no more refuse than I could fly to the moon. The taste was almost indescribable. A couple of weeks back I had come across a dead dog in a wrecked car in a junkyard. It had been in the car, in the sun, for a while, possibly a week. The water tasted like that car smelled. Putrid and sweet at the same time. It was almost a living thing and I swear at one point I did swallow something alive. It felt like a fat and swollen worm. When I felt it moving around in my mouth I tried to spit it out but found that I couldn't. I could feel it swelling and contracting and working its way down my throat. When it was about halfway down I realized that if I didn't swallow it I would choke to death so instead of trying to spit it up, I helped it along. The moment it was past my throat I felt a strange sense of power, like I had suddenly become stronger and wiser and meaner than I had ever been before. I felt like killing something. When I finally decided to get out the pool I was loath to leave the animals there, floating morosely on the surface. So I collected them all and hung them from the nearest tree with some rope I had found a few days earlier. It became my special place. No one ever went out there and no one ever found them but I would go there once a month and note the slow decomposition of the bodies. First they dried out, then the skin went hard, and then it went soft again and finally fell off. Eventually all that was left of them were the skeletons. I started calling it my Hanging Garden and I felt safe there like I had felt safe nowhere else in the world before. It was my special place and that's where I started getting my _ideas, _although, they were more like voices than ideas. Strange voices in a different tongue (many different tongues) in the back of my mind, telling me to do cruel and terrible things to people I didn't know. Just for fun.

I towel my face dry and have one last sip of water from the still-running tap before making my way back to the bed. As I leave the bathroom I flick of the lights and am plunged once again into almost total darkness. I reach the bed, lie down and am immediately terrified more than I have ever been in my life before. The moment my body is fully prone on the bed, head on the pillows on top of the blankets, I am paralysed from the neck down. It's like a thousand hands are gripping me tightly, holding me down, confining me. I am a block of wood. I can move nothing save my neck, my eyes and my mouth. The angle my head is resting on my pillows makes it possible for me to see my feet, the foot of the bed and the doorway beyond, almost. I try lifting my hands, I try wriggling my toes, I try bending my knees, nothing, nothing at all. It's as if the rest of my body has disappeared and now I'm just a severed head propped up on some dusty smelling pillows. I shake my head from side to side looking for some cause of this paralysis but see nothing. Just the blackness of my room. As there is nothing else for me to do I return my head to the middle of the pillows, looking down to where my feet are. There, just behind my feet, I see something that turns my blood to ice and my bowels to jelly. Two eyes are rising from under the bed, staring back at me, eyes like angry green fire, and then the voice comes. _"H elloo, Sssssteven, I've been w aiting for you" _

**4**

**I am quite lucky. It just sounded hungry. You needs some teaching boy. The Garden of Eden. For the dream I am eternally grateful. Queerboy. Take your medicine. On the road. **

This time I do piss myself. I can feel the warm liquid running down my leg and can smell the ammonia stink of urine spilled in fear. I am quite lucky, I suppose, if I hadn't just gone to the toilet a minute ago there would be a lot more of that liquid running down my leg and staining the sheets. As it is the smell is almost overpowering in the small room. Something else is worrying me, something far more disconcerting than a wet patch on hotel sheets. If I can feel the warm liquid against my legs then that means I can still _feel. _I'm obviously not paralysed in the traditional sense of the word. No, I can't move any of my muscles below my neck, not so much as a millimeter but I can still feel. The eyes are still there at the foot of the bed, staring at me, seeing me, looking _into _me. It isn't the eyes I'm so frightened of; it's the mouth underneath the eyes and the teeth in the mouth. Those long, pointy, blood-stained teeth. I haven't drawn a breath since I first spotted the eyes and I can feel my lungs stating to swell and burn in my chest. I take a tentative gasping breath and can smell something in the air. "_Used matches, the monkey-house at the zoo, old gym bag? What is that?" _I ask myself and then I realize that I probably shouldn't be too concerned with the smell. I have bigger problems at the moment than unpleasant odours.

"_YeSssss Ssste ven, I've been Ssssear ching for you"_, out of the darkness the voice came again. _"Sssearching for Sssooo looo ong"_.

The voice doesn't sound angry or displeased, it doesn't sound scared or fearful or even glad, it just sounds hungry.

"_We h ave lotsss to disss cusss, you and I, Y essss indeed. Lotssssss."_

When I was a small boy my father used to burn me with cigarettes. If I dropped a dish or left the washing out on the line when it rained or talked back to him when he was admonishing me he would say the same thing every time. "BOY! Go gets me my Camels" and I would do it. A quick burning with his unfiltered Camel Filters was far better than some of the things he could, and did, do to me. I would fetch him his smokes and he would make a big show of lighting one in front of me, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke out into my face. "You needs some teaching boy" he would say before pressing the glowing ember at the end of his cigarette into the soft flesh on my belly (arm burns would be visible at school). The voice that I heard at the foot of my bed was like the sound my skin made as it blackened and burned under the end of his smokes.

"_Ssste ven. How good it feelsss to l ook at you" _the voice said and then the eyes went out.

All I can hear in the room is the sound of my own rapid breathing, the rise and fall of my chest and the hiss of the air out of my lungs.

"_Y ou l ook Ssssooo t assssty"_

"JESUS CHRIST!" I exclaim. The voice is coming from right next to my right ear. One second the voice was coming from the foot of the bed and then it is right near me. I heard no footsteps coming closer, I heard no breathing next to my head but all the same, there the voice was. So close to my ear was its mouth that I could feel the heat from the fires in its eyes on my cheek and could smell the flesh stuck between its teeth.

"_MMmmmm, Ta ssty litlle sssnack" _it whispers into my ear and I can imagine it drooling in anticipation of its next meal. Me. The voice sounds like the Morningstar in the Garden of Eden. Full of knowledge and deceit and above all, fury and hatred.

"What do you want?" I plead, my own voice weak with fear and pleading. "What do you want from me?" then, next to my left ear, comes its reply.

"_Jussst you, Ssst even. J usssst you." _

I faint for the first time this evening then. I would faint plenty during the course of the night but that was the first and most welcome time. It gave me a chance to dream one last pleasant dream. All my other dreams during that long night would be filled with pain and fear, but this one was pure and bright and for that I am eternally grateful.

My father spent a month in jail when I was fifteen. One of my teachers at school wasn't convinced by the answer I had given her when she asked how I had broken my arm. I told her that I was playing in the woods behind my house and had fallen out of a tree. My right elbow bent back ninety degrees and shattered when I stuck my arm out to try and cushion my fall. The truth is close enough. I had broken my father's favorite pipe when I took it out of his chest of drawers and pretended to be Sherlock Holmes, puffing away in that sage manner of his. When my father came home he saw the broken remains of his pipe, took me roughly by the hand and led me out to his tool shed. Once there he offered no admonishment, he didn't scold me and he certainly didn't try and explain the concept of personal property to me. He simply stuck my arm in his vice, palm facing upward and gripped at the elbow, and then he leaned down on my arm until the elbow broke. He then tightened to vice further, shattering the already broken bones further. I was then driven to the hospital, my father providing the falling-out-of-a-tree story to me on the way. Some of the more observant teachers at school had been noticing more and more bruises on my body and had grown suspicious of someone at home. They called in the child welfare people who came to our house and asked my folks some questions. A man and woman arrived late one Friday afternoon. They looked like my mental picture of accountants, drab and serious and business-like. They took my mom and dad to separate rooms and asked them the same questions. "How did Steve break his arm? What time did the incident occur? What day of the week? Where? How? Why was he alone?" and other questions of that nature. When they came out they compared the answers each parent had given and when they were done, they shook my father's hand and left. Twenty minutes later a police car arrived and they handcuffed my father and took him away. My mom cried for a bit, I don't know why, he was as mean to her as he was to me, but cry she did. Then she turned to me and said "Would you like to learn how to bake?"

My father would never let me into the kitchen. He said that it was a woman's place and that any man who wanted to cook was "A queerboy, and no son of mine is going to be a queerboy". So I immediately said yes to my mother's offer. I think that was the happiest month of my childhood. My mom and I spent every last minute we could in the kitchen that month, cooking up a storm. Baked goods, savory and sweet, flowed out of the oven like a river. The house was constantly filled with the smell of yeast and dough and eggs and sugar and vanilla. We laughed a lot too; our house was never a cheerful one, but that month it was filled with the sweet sound of a mother laughing with her son for the first time properly. I often think that if what happened at the end of that magical month hadn't, I might have turned out as a chef, as it is, well, let's just say life doesn't always turn out the way you want it to. In order to stand trial for child abuse my father was transferred from the local town jail to the bigger courtroom come holding facility in the city. It was in transit that he managed to escape. He managed to garrote the two guards accompanying him with a piece of wire he made out of the springs of his prison cot. He wasted no time coming home. He arrived home just in time to find my mom and I having a flour fight in the kitchen. We were hurling handfuls of flour at each other, looking like ghosts and laughing like lunatics when out of the corner of her eye my mom spotted him silhouetted in the doorway. "Eeek' she exclaimed as her knees gave out and she fell to the floor. "I'm sorry Pete, I was just playing with him" she pleaded with my father, who still hadn't said a word.

"You want to turn my son into a queerboy", my father snarled from the doorway, "Is that what you're trying to do? Well, we'll just see about that".

It was then that I noticed the machete, hanging heavy and long, almost down to the floor in my father's right hand. He strode forward into the room, his feet thundering on the wooden floor, and with one mighty swipe he cut my mom's head clean off her shoulders. It glided almost majestically through the air, flinging blood around the room in a graceful arc, and landed in the mixing bowl on the kitchen table with a wet slap. Her eyes were open and there was a surprised look in them, but her mouth was smiling. I stood there staring at my mother's head in the mixing bowl, along with six egg yolks, some flour, a pinch of salt and some yeast and I decided then and there that my father must die. He rounded on me and I gave a little yelp of surprise. His skin was pulled so taught on his face I thought it would split any second, his eyes were crazy, rolling around in their sockets glazed and empty and yet frighteningly sane and he was grinning from ear to ear.

"Now queerboy" he snarled "It's time take your medicine".

I spun on my heels and ran from the kitchen just as fast as I could. I was sure he would be coming after me, machete raised above his head and his eyes rolling lazily about. Not seeing anything but me. He chased me deep into the woods that day. I could almost feel his breath on the back of my neck as we raced through the trees and a few times I felt the air move just below the nape of my neck. That was when he swung the machete hoping to decapitate me as he had my mother but these were my woods, this was my place and I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me dead. I knew these woods much better than he did and so I managed to stay ahead of him all the way to the Hanging Garden. As I rounded the final bend before the Garden I ducked under the dead-dog skeleton and turned a sharp left, avoiding the pool. My father didn't know what was coming and he ran headfirst into the bones of the old dog, blinding him for an instant, but a long enough instant. He fell into the pool without uttering a word. He just ran straight into it, dropping the machete as he did. While he was floundering about trying to stand up in the thick, mucky water, I calmly picked up his weapon. When he had calmed down enough he saw me standing there above him with his knife in my hand and some of the craziness went out of his eyes.

"Look boy, just give me that and we'll forget all about th…"

That was as far as I let him get. I swung the machete like a baseball player going for deep left field and I caught him with his mouth open, slicing it open from the corners of his lips to his ears. Blood sprayed out in two streams down the side of his face and his bottom lip and the bottom halves of his cheeks seemed to fold outward on themselves, doubling up in two wet flaps. I could clearly see the whole of his bottom jaw and I remember thinking "_You need a couple of fillings". _He would never get them.

"Ghaa, Whaa oo doo oo eee?" he tried to ask but I cave him no answer, save one. I buried the machete in the top of his head, bringing it down in a steady arch from behind my back, over my head and finally directly into the top of his skull in one smooth motion. There was a sound like an ax clunking into a hardwood tree trunk and the light went completely out in his eyes. He sank to his knees with the machete buried solidly in his head, it was vibrating rapidly I noticed and then I felt that same vibration in my hands, then he tipped face forwards into dark water and sunk to the bottom. I turned and walked back to the house, not looking back once. I gathered some things; clothes, a bag, spare shoes, whatever money I could find and then set fire to the house and walked away. I've been on the road ever since, and sometimes, in the dark of night, I think I'm not a very nice man and I try to remember what I did to all the women I've met during my travels.

As I wake from this dream, one I've had many times before, my first thought is that I am my father, still alive and sinking to the bottom of that pool. I feel like I am drowning. There is a terrible weight on my chest and I can't catch my breath. I open my eyes and the green fires are right in front of my face, the light from them glinting off the razor sharp teeth in the thing's mouth. The light from it's eyes filling up my entire field of vision, making me night blind the way you get when a car doesn't dip it's high-beams when coming towards you on a dark stretch of road. It's lying on top of me staring into my face. I can feel its leather/not-leather coat sliding over my thighs. The coat, I'm now convinced, is made from the skin of a dozen Negroes.

"Oh God" I say into its face.

"_Godsss not he re tonight. J usssst you and I"_ it hisses at me and then it laughs. Its laugh is like chewing on broken glass, shrill and insane and painful.

"What do you want from me?" I plead with it. Not wanting to know but dying to find out (ha).

"_It w antssss to know what I w ant, Sssshall I sss how it?" _was its reply.

"Yes, please show me" I sob. And so it did.

**5**

**Somewhere in the dark. A million images. Angelique. The disease that is me. A doorway through which it could step. _Knivesssss. _Steel will always be stronger than skin. Worse than the one that came before it.**

The eyes wink out in front of me and I feel the weight lift from my body. This gives me no comfort as I know it's still in the room with me. Somewhere in the dark. A hand touches my foot and I scream for the first time that night. It circles my foot with a tenderness I find repulsive. In a slow, agonising crawl the hand caresses its way up my leg, cupping my balls and running a finger along my flaccid member when it reaches that area. The hand is cold but its touch burns. As it makes its way over my stomach it stops and touches each one of the burn scars I have there. This takes quite a long time. As it touches each circular scar I am reminded of the pain I endured receiving each one. It flattens it's hand palm down as it makes it's way over my hairless chest and then lifts off almost completely, leaving only one finger to trace over my chin, my lips, my nose and finally, as it reaches my eyes, it speaks again.

"_Itssss t ime to Sssssee"._

I feel the hand press down on my eyelids and a million images flash in my brain. I see my first kill, my first real kill, a person that is, not my Father, for the first time in its entirety. Like I said before things always get a bit fuzzy after the first cut. I can never remember exactly what I did, or even why. But now I can. Now I see that first one clear as if it were happing right in front of me. Her name was Angelique and I cut her up like a fish. I'd been hitchhiking around aimlessly since the day I killed my father and burned my childhood house down. My only consideration when it came to accepting rides was that the car had to be going in the opposite direction of my home town. I had no final destination in mind I just wanted to get as far away from the town I was raised in before the authorities figured out that I didn't die in the conflagration. As far as I know, they never did. They never found my father's body, nor mine, nor figured out why my mother's head was separated from her body when they found it in the rubble and ash. I'd been sleeping rough the whole time, bus shelters, park benches and even, for a couple of weeks, a disused barn. It was to the barn that I brought Angelique. I met her in a park where I was scrounging in the bin for scraps and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Her face lived up to her name perfectly and her hazel eyes, gentle and caring, filled up almost the whole half of the top of her face. They were big and round and compassionate. Her skin was smoother than I thought it possible for skin to be and her dead-straight blond hair came down almost to her waist, which was slim and petit. She had a soft, pink mouth that turned up at the edges when she smiled, or screamed. Her eyes lit up like the sun when she smiled. She was about my age, fifteen or sixteen, and she had a voice that could melt glass. I wanted to kill her from the moment I saw her, I don't know why. She came over to me when she saw me take a half-eaten sandwich out of the bin and raise it to my mouth to eat it.

"Don't eat that" were her first words to me and they sounded like heaven to my ears "it'll make you sick".

"I'm hungry" I replied "and I have no money". I said back to her, ashamed of the state of my clothes and my lack of money.

"Come with me" she beckoned and so I did.

She took me to a local McDonalds and bought me a hamburger meal, the first one I had ever had and we talked for hours. Eventually she asked me where I was sleeping and I said I would show her. So she came with me willingly to the barn and to her doom. I had taken a selection of knives from my old house and I used all of them on her. Testing the blades. I never knew why I do what I do. Killing. Until now, it was dawning on me in waves and I think that's what the creature wants from me, for me to know why I'm a killer before I myself am killed. In my mind it all came rushing back, how I had killed Angelique. How I used different knives to slice, different ones to pierce and still others to separate skin from sinew. I saw myself removing her fingers, putting out her eyes, cutting off her lips and kissing them and I was repulsed. I knew I was a bad man but not how truly awful I was. That is how I live. I find lonely women and I talk them into trusting me and then I kill them and take any money and valuables they may have and then I move on. Looking for the next one. The images of Angelique faded from my mind and then the second woman appeared, Michelle, I did her in a field in the countryside, far from any eyes or ears that could save her. I was a bit sloppy with Angelique, it was my first kill and I didn't know what I was doing, with Michelle I was better. She took four hours to die and the pain she suffered was exquisite. Then I saw Claire, done in the basement of her parent's house, then Sara. Then Jane. Carmen, Rose, Sally, Donna-Marie, they all came flooding back. Tens of them, hundreds of them. One after another I saw the lives that had come into contact with the disease that is me and I saw what I did to them. And with each one a little more realisation came. And finally, after image after image of gruesome murders had flashed before my eyes, I knew what the creature wanted. It was the worm, the one I had swallowed years ago and almost completely forgotten about. Something had gotten into me that day I swam in the pool of dead things. When that weird feeling came over me and I just _had _to drink the foul water. Something was lurking in that pool, for how long? I don't know. It hunkered down there in the pool just waiting for the right person to come along and infect. I was always a bad boy; something was always just slightly off-kilter with me. I enjoyed hurting small animals and younger children long before I drank from the waters of the dead pool. Maybe that's how it was able to get in me, I was susceptible, I welcomed it, I was a doorway through which it could step and infect the world because I was bad, maybe not evil, not yet, but bad enough to accept whatever lurked at the bottom of that pool. And accept it I did. I never questioned what happened to me that day because I was suddenly strong, and cunning, and a fearful thing to behold. And I liked that. On and on the images came, girl after girl, woman after woman, in horrifying detail. The savageness of the murders frightened me to the depths of my soul and I was the one who had perpetrated these crimes. I knew what it wanted, what it had come here to feed on and as it was clear in my mind the images stopped. I was back in my room, naked on the bed, stiff as a board. The hand of the creature was gone from my eyes but I still couldn't see. It is too dark. It's the dark of moonless midnight, of coal mines and the deepest parts of the ocean. It's the darkness that lurks in the hearts and souls of men like me.

"You want the thing inside me, don't you" I said unto the dark.

"_Yesssss" _I heard the creature say.

I can't see its eyes or its teeth or its strange Leather coat but I knew it was still here in the room with me. It wouldn't leave now, not when it's so close to getting what it wants.

"Take it, I don't want it anymore" I implored. Then I could see the eyes again, leaning over my head, directly above me, staring at me, consuming my fear.

"_Yesssss" _the creature repeated.

"How do you get it out?" I asked, not really wanting an answer.

"_W ith Knivesss, my friend, W ith Knivessss" _I heard these words but I didn't need to be told, I knew this already.

The pain, when it came, was incredible. For the first time I can hear the creature moving around the room. I can hear it rummaging around looking for something under my bed, and I knew exactly what it was looking for. My little black bag. I've had the bag for years now and it has become my trusty traveling companion. Until five minutes ago I had forgotten where I got the bag but since the creature clarified my mind I couldn't forget if I tried. One of my victims, Julianne, hurt me quite badly once. I didn't tie her hands up properly before I started to work and she somehow managed to get loose while I wasn't looking. She picked a knife up off the floor and plunged it into my left shoulder. That's all she managed to do. I sliced her throat open with the knife I had in my hand and she died quickly. It was enough though and I needed serious medical attention. I wandered into the nearest town, losing lots of blood along the way, eventually finding a doctor's office. The doctor's name was Jolene and I just loved her little black bag. I told her some story about how I was sleeping in the park when two thugs came up and mugged me. One of them stabbing me in the shoulder when I tried to stop them taking my wallet. She was very sympathetic and stitched me up for free. I, in return, cut off her head with a bonesaw and stole her little black bag. Along with some very sharp, very silver scalpels that have become my tools of choice over the past few years. Some of them are now quite blunt and rusty but they cut just fine, if you press down hard enough. Steel will always be stronger than skin. I can hear the creature bringing my bag out from under the bed and I can feel it placing it on the bed. I hear the sound of the clasp being undone and I start to get truly terrified. The creature is taking its time, there is no rush, as there is nothing I can do and nowhere I can go. I hear blades being drawn out of the bag, knocking against each other with the familiar _snick _sound that I have gotten so used to over the past few years. Where it once made my blood boil that sound now turns it to ice. And then I feel the blade softly touching my testicles and they retreat up inside me as far as they can go.

"_Itssss t ime Misss ter Gravesssss" _the voice whispers in my ear with obvious glee.

I'd like to be able to say that the first cut was the worst, that after that I became immune to the pain and I didn't feel a thing, but that would be a lie. The first cut is bad alright, terrible even, I've never felt anything so awful in my life, although I have made hundreds of women feel exactly that, and they just get worse. Each successive cut is worse than the one that came before it until I am screaming so loud I tear open my throat. Well, in my head I'm screaming, I can hear my voice in my mind like you can when you shout underwater but I don't think any sound is coming out. Any creature that can paralyse you just by looking at you probably has no need for a physical gag and if even half the sound I think I am making is actually coming out of my mouth, I would have woken half the town, even poor Sharleen in the bathtub. The first cut is on my balls. Right in the middle between my two shriveled testicles and I can feel my sack burst and my testes fall out of my body and bang against my legs, still attached with sinew and gristle. The pain is like an explosion in my head and loins, white hot and all consuming. I can't think, I can't hear, I can't see, all I can do is feel. Feel the terrible heat and warmth as blood begins to pool between my legs. The second is along the top of my right arm, from my elbow to my wrist. All the way down to the bone. When I feel the creature's hands digging inside my flesh, wrapping its strangely hot fingers around the bones in my arm and _pulling _that is when I passe out for the second time. My sleep doesn't last long and the dreams I have are angry and confused. Full of heat and light and pain. And when I come to again and I see the creature sitting at the end of my bed with its legs crossed, gnawing on my arm bone, that's when I start to weep.

"_F alling asssleep will not help, M issster Gravesss, I have a ll the t ime in the W orld. Yessss indeed. F or you, all t he t ime in t he W orld." _

The creature joyfully tells me, tossing my arm bone aside and picking up a scalpel once again. As it leans in towards me, it's manic grin red with my blood and it's eyes greener than ever, it looks right in my eyes and says the last words I will ever hear, and I had heard them once before, in my dream.

"_Ssssoo H UNGRY"_.

The creature starts working again and will not stop for six hours. I am awake through all of it, save for a few minutes when I pass out from time to time, and when I finally die, when the creature gets from me what it had come for and I close my eyes for the last time, I know that all I will hear will be the TV static deadsong from my dream.

**6**

**Down the road walks a man dressed all in black.**

Down the road walks a man dressed all in black. At least, from behind, he looks like a man. No one would ever mistake this creature for a man if viewed from the front. He's wearing black cowboy boots of the finest Spanish leather. They make a chinking sound as they scuff the tarmac. His jeans are also black, not faded in the slightest. But it's his coat that seems the strangest. It looks almost exactly like black leather, or really dark brown leather, at first glance. A second look will convince you that it's not leather at all but rather some cheap substitute for leather, but that doesn't seem right either. A third look and you will realise that it _is _leather after all but that the material certainly didn't come from any creature of the Bovine variety. And when you see its eyes and its teeth and its completely insane grin you will know _exactly _what kind of leather that is. The creature was pleased. Mr. Graves had fed it well, the best ever in fact and it could feel the power surging through its veins. It had dined well on what it had both put into, and taken out of, Steven Graves. Soon it will be strong enough to do what it came here to do. Keeping Steven Graves paralysed like that and shielding his voice from the world had taken just about all the power it possessed. Getting into his dreams had been easy; after all, he was part of Steven Graves. He was physically inside Mr. Graves so getting inside him mentally had been easy. But exerting physical restraint on him had been _hard. _But now, with the added strength that it's parasite had taken from the weak Mr. graves it was able to restrain a dozen people at once, while levitating and humming a tune. Just a few hundred more like him and it would be ready. And then it would have some _fun. _Now it was on its way to its next victim/host. It knew exactly who the next one would be and it knew exactly what it was going to do him and as usual, as always, it will start with a dream and end with a nightmare.

end


End file.
